Linklaters’ dedicated Pensions Litigation Group is the market leading dispute resolution practice
The Pensions Litigation Group deals with the most difficult, complex and high value pension disputes in the UK.
Most of the work we do for our clients never becomes public knowledge: we are expert at resolving and avoiding disputes. We always take the most proactive and constructive approach but are always ready to fight our client’s corner and defend their interests.
We are distinct from our competitors in a number of important ways:
- we have a full-time specialist pensions litigation partner with extensive experience, dedicated to this area, who heads up the practice
- we are more proactive: we end up in court far less for our clients
- we help our clients with early and effective risk management
- we provide an all-round - in depth service, seeing problems from all angles, working as a seamless team with our mainstream Pensions group.
Three recent examples of public cases we have acted in are:
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Pilots National Pension Fund: Warren J decided in December 2010 on an application that the Trustees of the Pilots National Pension Fund had powers to impose obligations on the various ports around the UK to make good a £250m plus deficit in the fund. We successfully acted for the first defendant, a former pilot appointed to represent all self-employed pilots in the scheme. The case is now being appealed to the Court of Appeal.
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Lehman Brothers Pension Scheme/Nortel UK Pension Plan: we acted in separate regulatory matters for a number of Lehman and Nortel companies who are targets of financial support directions (FSD) from the Pensions Regulator. We also acted for Lehman companies in separate proceedings to determine whether the liabilities under a FSD were provable alongside unsecured creditors in the administrations or were to be treated as an expense (with super-priority over the unsecured creditors and floating charge holders). This issue is on appeal to the Court of Appeal and may go to the Supreme Court given its importance.
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Singapore Airlines Pension Scheme: we acted for a professional sued for negligence where it was identified at an early stage that the claim turned on the meaning of certain rules. We were successful in obtaining judgment on this issue on behalf of the processional and the scheme members. The case is now on appeal to the Court of Appeal.
Find out more about Linklaters’ quarterly publication, Pensions Ombudsman Focus
